Poetry Codex

American

Wallace Stevens

1879–1955

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) was an American poet, born in Reading, Pennsylvania, who spent his working life as an insurance executive in Hartford, Connecticut.

“Peter Quince at the Clavier”, which this archive takes from Untermeyer’s 1921 anthology, first appeared in 1915 and was later collected in Harmonium (1923).

Harmonium (Knopf, 1923) was his first book.

Poems (74)

  1. Peter Quince at the Clavier
  2. Earthy Anecdote
  3. Invective against Swans
  4. In the Carolinas
  5. The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage
  6. The Plot against the Giant
  7. Infanta Marina
  8. Domination of Black
  9. The Snow Man
  10. The Ordinary Women
  11. The Load of Sugar-Cane
  12. Le Monocle de Mon Oncle
  13. Nuances of a Theme by Williams
  14. Metaphors of a Magnifico
  15. Ploughing on Sunday
  16. Cy Est Pourtraicte, Madame Ste Ursule, et Les Unze Mille Vierges
  17. Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores
  18. Fabliau of Florida
  19. The Doctor of Geneva
  20. Another Weeping Woman
  21. Homunculus et la Belle Etoile
  22. The Comedian as the Letter C
  23. From the Misery of Don Joost
  24. O, Florida, Venereal Soil
  25. Last Looks at the Lilacs
  26. The Worms at Heaven’s Gate
  27. The Jack-Rabbit
  28. Valley Candle
  29. Anecdote of Men by the Thousand
  30. The Silver Plough-Boy
  31. The Apostrophe to Vincentine
  32. Floral Decorations for Bananas
  33. Anecdote of Canna
  34. Of the Manner of Addressing Clouds
  35. Of Heaven Considered as a Tomb
  36. Of the Surface of Things
  37. Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks
  38. A High-Toned Old Christian Woman
  39. The Place of the Solitaires
  40. The Weeping Burgher
  41. The Curtains in the House of the Metaphysician
  42. Banal Sojourn
  43. Depression before Spring
  44. The Emperor of Ice-Cream
  45. The Cuban Doctor
  46. Tea at the Palaz of Hoon
  47. Exposition of the Contents of a Cab
  48. Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock
  49. Sunday Morning
  50. The Virgin Carrying a Lantern
  51. Stars at Tallapoosa
  52. Explanation
  53. Six Significant Landscapes
  54. Bantams in Pine-Woods
  55. Anecdote of the Jar
  56. Palace of the Babies
  57. Frogs Eat Butterflies. Snakes Eat Frogs. Hogs Eat Snakes. Men Eat Hogs
  58. Jasmine’s Beautiful Thoughts underneath the Willow
  59. Cortège for Rosenbloom
  60. Tattoo
  61. The Bird with the Coppery, Keen Claws
  62. Life Is Motion
  63. Architecture
  64. The Wind Shifts
  65. Colloquy with a Polish Aunt
  66. Gubbinal
  67. Two Figures in Dense Violet Night
  68. Theory
  69. To the One of Fictive Music
  70. Hymn from a Watermelon Pavilion
  71. Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
  72. Nomad Exquisite
  73. Tea
  74. To the Roaring Wind

See Wallace Stevens in the full archive →